Your Choice To Choose Then Tweak To Sustain Or Increase
Posted by terrepruitt on May 15, 2014
You might have seen my post Are You Happy – It’s Your Choice that used the “poster” created by Alex Kopblin. It is a flow chart asking if you are happy with simple instructions on how to stay or become happy. Well, I just connected that to Nia. More accurately to two Nia Principles. I was looking through my Blue Belt Book of Alchemy and it dawned on me that the triad for Principle #1 is kind of like Alex’s flow chart. He asks the question “Are you happy?” whereas in Nia we choose it. His flow chart goes through simple steps to get to happy, whereas the Nia triad leads us to sensation and guides us to “tweak” in order to “sustain” or “increase” our Universal Joy. While I have been thinking about choosing “happy” and joy, I hadn’t thought about either of these ideals/posters. Even though I have Alex’s on my wall, directly in my face. And I certainly hadn’t thought about how they are slightly connected/the same, until right now.
I often feel that Nia and its principles apply to life. That is why it is a practice and not just a cardio dance workout. As I have said many times . . . it IS a cardio dance workout, and if that is all you want to get out of it . . . GREAT. You will get a GREAT workout. But if you want to learn more about it and see how it applies to life you will find things like this.
You will find that Nia and its principle align up with a lot of memes out there on Facebook The information aligns up with so many things because it is body center and it makes sense. Nia is not necessarily the creator of many of these things, but they do have an amazing way of packaging it up. One way they package it up so well is to relate it to movement. There we are back to the cardio dance workout.
Anyway . . . I was a bit surprised to realize both of these ideas pretty much matched up. But then after my initial, “Oh wow!” I realized, as I stated above, Nia connects to a lot of things. While happy and Joy – as in the Universal Joy might not be the same thing, both of these things (the poster and Nia’s principle) are telling us that we are in control. We are in control of our happiness and we are in control of connecting to the Universal Joy. Neither is always easy at all times . . . but they are both always available to us.
I also believe that sometimes we do not choose emotions, sometimes they just happen. There are times in life when we might need to just let them be and experience them. But that might not be where we want to stay and be all the time.
There are many ways to experience the emotion of happiness and there are many ways to connect to the Joy. What is really amazing is that the ways to do so might not be the same for every one . . . everyBODY is different.
What do you think? I am just thinking out loud and marveling at the Nia connection to things. As I wonder – at times – about my choice of Joy.
How are you about finding your own happiness? What do you do to experience your “happy”? What do you do to connect to Joy?
Terre Pruitt's Blog 
Betty Galloway said
Hello again Terre! What a timely post for me as I’ve been exploring finding joy in life again following some difficult times two years ago.Nia was the path for me back to happiness at least for a time as the connection with community seems to be a critical factor for me. But what I’ve learned is that my joy often comes from external sources. Usually it is someone that is like the match that lights the fire of passion that is within me yet i seem to have difficulty lighting that fire myself. I’ve learned recently that reliance on external things especially people to support your passions is a recipe for disappointment and sorrow. As I have been recently alienated from my Nia community I am trying to learn to find joy from within. While it is definitely true that we chose joy you are on the mark that feeling emotions is not always within our control. Great post!
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terrepruitt said
Hello, again, Betty. Love having you here!
You have learned a powerful lesson. Not everyone learns that lesson. Joy from external sources is fleeting, Joy from within is eternal. While it might get dulled or overlooked . . . it is still there.
I am sorry you have been alienated from your Nia community.
I do always like to remind people that I believe feelings/emotions are to be felt AND they are not always controllable. How we react or act when experiencing an emotion is controllable. I also don’t think people need to be happy all the time we are all entitled to feel what we feel. **I** choose not to wallow for long. 🙂 I am thinking a lot about choosing Joy because I keep wondering if I shouldn’t be . . . . . but I keep coming back to it. Maybe it just hasn’t hit me yet . . . . . I don’t know. But, thank you for being hear and sharing. And you have my e-mail address if you want to share more . . .
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